Upgrading from Win98 to Win2K on LAN?

[james73]

We have a number of Dell Optiplex PC's in our small office LAN. They're
all Pentium III's (either 450, 550 or 600MHz CPU's) and all have 128Mb RAM.
All are running Windows 98SE. They all have onboard LAN and onboard graphics
card.

My question is this - If I double the RAM to 256Mb on these boxes, will they
be good enough to upgrade the O/S to Windows 2000 Pro? All we really use
them for is running a database program and browsing the internet. They'll
also have an anti-virus program running.


Cheers in advance.



James H

[Mickwish]

I have a win2k box at work that's running with 64Mb RAM! Not fast, but it runs.

128 is actually fine unless you are doing big database searches. 256 should be plenty for win2k. Any CPU over 300MHz should be fine for simple tasks in win2k. I assume the database is on the LAN somewhere, so each client will not be running big database queries?

If it was XP, though, that needs at least 512MB RAM to run nice.

Oh, and make sure all hardware in the PC's is supported by win2k before you start. Could save some hassles.

Link to HCL for win2k.

Cheers
Mick

[Uncle Bob]

Your machines should handle win2k. I've seen the Optiplex at the
V A hospital running win 2k.

[DanGrease]

As mensioned before, Windows 2000 Professional will work well with 128MB, but more memory wont hurt, so if you want 256MB then its fine. It all depends on what you are going to use the computer for. If you are a multi tasker then I would recommend 256MB for the system to run smooth. It even runs in 64MB, but its of course slower and you wont be able to do alot of mulit tasking (you can, but be prepared for coffee breaks) Also if you someday go for Windows XP then 512MB is the minimum IMO for the system to run as smooth as possible. 1024MB is the ideal for great performance together with multi tasking.

dan

[Optimus Prime]

256 should be more than enough for Win 2000. 512 or 1024 is pretty much overkill for databases. Even in WinXP, 256 is enough to run even with multitasking, i know as my collegue has it running on a PIII 600 w/256 mb 2100 DDR Ram.

[james73]

Thanks for the replys.

I also meant to ask about hard disc space. Now, I like to partition
the hard disc - I split our Win XP PC's HDD into C: and D: - but
some of these old Dell boxes only have 6.4Gb HDD's. I was thinking
of spliting them C: 3.4Gb and D: 3Gb. Is that going to be enough
disc space for Win 2000 Pro? I tend to put the O/S on the C: and
any programs on the D:

In this case the only programs that will be installed on the D: will
be Acrobat Reader, our Database program (ACT) and MS Office.
All user database files are stored on the server.


Cheers.


James H

[james73]

Pressed wrong button